Tag Archives: Crissy

(PLEASE NOTE: This blog contains the maniacal ravings of a Season 2 survivor with [practically] no inside knowledge of how this season was produced. It should be treated as opinion only, and isn’t fit to be read by anyone.)

We’re down to 6…but are we? Apparently, the producers are pulling another surprise comeback, but this one is just bizarre. Each of the judges has invited back one formerly-eliminated contestant. Gordon selects Bri to come back, Joe brings back Lynn, and Graham selects Bime.

This is weird, folks. If I had been a recently eliminated contestant like Eddie, I’d be furious. All 3 of these contestants were eliminated before him, but now THEY get a chance to win back their spot, but HE doesn’t? Of course…that’s assuming that MasterChef is real, which it most certainly is not. It was at this same point last season that I basically threw in the towel of ever being able to watch MasterChef seriously again… These moves remove ALL suspension of disbelief that this is actually a contest. They prove, plain as day, that the producers are completely manipulating the results of the show for dramatic effect.

From one perspective, it’s not fair to allow ANY eliminated contestant to come back. However, the theoretical format of MasterChef isn’t fair at all…the strongest competitor can get eliminated on a single challenge of the only thing (s)he’s weak on, and while (s)he may be stronger in 99% of challenges than ALL the other contestants, a single falter can get them eliminated. That’s not fair to begin with. (The PROPER format for a cooking competition like this is for EVERY contestant to stay the ENTIRE season and participate in EVERY challenge, and the overall winner of the most challenges wins that ‘coveted’ MasterChef trophy. But then there’s no suspense from episode to episode, so you stop watching. So you can thank the short attention span of the American audience for driving reality TV to the engineered elimination format.)

But making this comeback colossally unfair is this subjective selection of 3 contestants, rather than the LAST 3 eliminated.

Now that we’re stuck with this infinitely bizarre choice, I personally think Lynn is the most talented sophisticated cook (perhaps in the whole competition), so I’d be interested in seeing him come back most of all.

The contestants are told they have 5 minutes to shop in the MasterChef pantry, and when they dash back, they discover that the only ingredient in the pantry is eggs. Millions of eggs. And this challenge will be about producing the perfect sunny-side up egg.

To a lot of folks, this would be a terrifying challenge. I mean, even a short order cook at a diner usually doesn’t get it right. To others, this challenge is offensively elementary. (I mean…it’s really, REALLY easy to cook a sunny side up egg once you know how to do it.) My 5 year old nephew can do it.

But my first qualm is with Graham saying, “No burned edges.” Well, eggs don’t really burn unless you’ve got no clue what you’re doing, what he means is, “No browned edges.” This is one of my biggest gripes with the common chef attitude about cooking eggs. Eggs brown up just like meat at proper temperatures. Which means added flavor and texture. I am fed up with sallow, pale omelets and fried eggs. I cook ALL my eggs at high temperature so their surface is crusty and caramelized, and they are INFINITELY more delicious this way than when they are cooked at such low temps that they never brown. However, cooking them with high heat means VERY narrow margins between over-easy and over-hard, so you have to manage your heat and time very well when cooking that way.

Cooking with lower heat that doesn’t brown the egg gives you WAY more wiggle room, and making a sunny side up egg this way is as easy as falling off a log. And the contestants have 15 minutes to cook as many sunny side up eggs as they can, with 12 nonstick skillets and 2 stoves.

The very first egg from my backyard flock, and the lady who laid it.

Let’s chat eggs, shall we? One of my favorite subjects, obviously, as I have 11 chickens living in my back yard. Actually, a proper article on eggs would be an entire book, so let’s just talk about frying eggs. This is the ONLY application in my kitchen that I use a nonstick skillet for. If your cabinets are filled with nonstick skillets, donate them to Goodwill and get those outta there. They’re bad for you, for one. At high temperatures, the nonstick coating begins to break down at the molecular level and release carcinogens into the air. (Enough that it can kill your pet parrot dead in a few seconds.) WebMD and Good Housekeeping tell us, under the authority of a food science professor, that as long as you don’t heat nonstick pans above 500 degrees, you’re fine. Still…I don’t really wanna be cooking on a surface that becomes carcinogenic “only” at a certain temps. ?!? So many years ago, I ditched all my expensive nonstick, except for a single 8″ omelet pan that is used only for cooking eggs. And I never looked back. Nonstick is a HORRIBLE cooking surface, in terms of performance. If you prefer sacrificing flavor for ease of cleaning, you might as well just buy all your food in the frozen section and heat it in the microwave. Ditch your nonstick and fill your cabinets with cast iron, and clad stainless steel pans with copper cores.

To make the perfect sunny side up egg the way the judges want you to, preheat your nonstick pan over medium-low to medium heat (depending on how hot your stove is). When you can feel the warmth coming gently from the surface after a few minutes (or have a surface temp around 275F if you have one of those nifty infra-red thermometers), the pan is ready. Give it a spritz with spray oil, or brush it lightly with melted butter or bacon fat. Crack your eggs into the pan…or for better control, crack them first into a bowl so you can remove any bits of shell and ensure the egg isn’t rotten or with a bloody yolk. (A red spot or flake here and there is fine.) Let the egg bubble gently and keep an eye on the white right around the yolk. Once that white is completely solidified and is no longer translucent, tilt the pan toward your serving plate and gently shake the egg loose and onto the plate. Then salt and pepper and serve.

To make a BETTER sunny side up egg, heat the pan surface to 350F or so. This will give you some caramelization on the bottom of the egg for extra flavor and texture, and the white should cook through in under a minute.

Eggs from my backyard chickens, looking radically different in the pan from storebought eggs

A side note for those of you who are curious…my backyard eggs from my chickens have a white that’s VERY different from commercially available cage-free, organic eggs. (Well,the yolks are also very different.) The white has 2 dramatically distinct parts, the normal “runny” white that spreads out in the pan when you crack it (of which there is VERY little in my eggs), and a layer of VERY thick white that encases the yolk. This white is SO thick that it even forms a layer ON TOP of the yolk as it cooks, so my backyard eggs don’t work well for sunny side up eggs, because there’s still raw white sitting on top of the yolk, and if I cook it long enough for all the white to solidify, the yolks are cooked solid all the way through. I’m assuming this is because I typically eat the eggs the day they are laid, whereas as a storebought egg may be a week or two from being laid, or more. The whites break down and become runnier as the egg ages, but my delicious backyard eggs never sit around for that long before being eaten or gifted to neighbors, friends, and family.

I’ve also noticed quite a difference between the whites and yolks of eggs from the different breeds I have. The Black Australorps lay eggs with almost no runny white at all. (The eggs in this photo are from my Australorps.) While the eggs from the Wyandottes have more runny white and less thick white. The eggs you get at the store are laid by White Leghorns (pronounced “LEG-urns”), if they’re white, or Rhode Island Reds (or sometimes Hampshires), if they’re brown. So eggs from those chickens are the only eggs that the vast majority of Americans are familiar with. But there are HUNDREDS of breeds of chicken, and each lay eggs with their own unique qualities. And chickens which forage for their food lay eggs that differ dramatically by season, based on what their diet is. In a culinary-wise country, like France, they know which breeds and seasons are best for which applications. For example, spring egg yolks from Crevecour hens make the best custard. Whites from fall Faverolles hens are best for making meringue. But in our industrialized food production system, we move toward something called “monoculture” where we only raise 1 variety of something (which has often been selectively bred or genetically modified to maximize production) so other types of chickens, pigs, tomatoes, watermelons, etc. are becoming increasingly rare. Monoculture is bad news. Variety is always best.

The challenge begins and ends rather immediately, and judging begins with Joe throwing away 2 of Lynn’s eggs because they were undercooked. (He throws the entire plate into the garbage, shattering it. That’s not wasteful at all, Joe.) Then he throws away the PROPERLY cooked eggs with br0wned edges…that’s how they’re supposed to be cooked. More broken plates. By the time Joe has finished breaking plates, Lynn has 8 perfect eggs left.

Now it’s time to break some of Bri’s plates, and she ends up with 13. Bime is last, and of his 32 eggs, at least 9 are acceptable, once again bouncing Lynn from the MasterChef kitchen.

Now Bri and Bime will battle to win back their apron by breaking down and cooking 7 portions of Alaskan king salmon, asparagus, and potatoes, and serving them with Hollandaise sauce.

The judges present 2 beautiful salmon that they claim are line-caught off the coast of Alaska and cost $500 each. That’s a pricey salmon! Whole wild king salmon on the west coast usually costs between $12 and $16 a pound, which means this salmon must weigh 30-40 pounds, or it was sorely over-valued!

The challenge ends and the plates are delivered to the remaining 6 MasterChef contestants, plus Joe. We see some shots of fillets with that white stuff squeezed out of the sides. That’s not fat, as most people think. It’s a combination of proteins called “albumin.” The more you cook salmon, the more gets squeezed out. You can minimize this by brining the salmon for 10 minutes…use 1 Tablespoon of kosher salt per cup of water. This technique works for ALL steaky fishes, which all exude albumin, but because most of them have white flesh, it’s less noticeable.

The contestants place their votes for the best salmon, and miraculously, it comes down to 3 for Bri and 3 for Bime. Funny how that ALWAYS works, right? Without fail. It ALWAYS comes down to the last vote in every scenario like this. I mean, those odds are so good, you could bet on them every single time.

The last vote goes to Bri, and she regains her apron to bring the finalist count back up to 7. It’s lovely to see Bri come back…she’s one of my favorites. There is, however, a rumor mill that Bri is actually a hired actress and not a real contestant. (Her social media indicates she’s been friends with upper-level producers BEFORE the show was filmed.) And she’s been working as a pastry chef in LA since the show filmed, and has been offered a job as a pastry chef at Thomas Keller’s legendary NYC artisan bakery Bouchon. Such offers have NEVER been bestowed on an amateur chef from MasterChef before…in fact, such an offer is practically unheard of in ALL of competitive food television, including shows with professional chefs. Which sorta leads me to think that Bri is a professional pastry chef (and her college theatre background is merely how she’s being labeled on the show), and the producers know her well enough to know what a perfect addition she would be to the cast this year. Her character on the show may, in fact, all be an act. Check out her professional acting portfolio shots: http://www.starnow.com/brikozior/photos/2216100/#!photo-2216112

(Thanks to fan Nick Shiraef for finding those. They’re actually great photos, Bri! But certainly nothing like the pale, geeky vegetarian we’re seeing on MasterChef. Some people are saying she’s actually not vegetarian at all, which would explain why she cooks meat so well!)

Again…all this is merely rumor. But more than one MC contestant from previous seasons were beginning to doubt the authenticity of her spot as an actual contestant BEFORE these rumors and Facebook photos started flying around, so it’s certainly not unthinkable. (UPDATE: Bri has sent me a comment via her Facebook account that she would like included here, so you can read her side of the story in the comments below.)

But one thing is certain…Bri’s character on the show is totally adorable, and I’ll be glad to see more of it, whether it actually represents her authentic self or not.

Let me know what you thought of this episode on the comments below, and relish these last few blog posts, because once I hit the road for Burning Man on the 17th, I won’t be watching or blogging about MasterChef until AFTER the show has finished airing, when I get back in late September! Only one blog left until then…

(PLEASE NOTE: The content that follows is entirely from the depraved mind of a MasterChef season 2 survivor. It should be treated, not as fact, but as opinion, only…and probably not a very sound opinion, at that!)

We’re down to 7 for MasterChef season 4. At this point in my season, Christine Corley and Derrick Prince had just been eliminated on the grilled cheese and tomato soup challenge, dropping the number from 8 to 6 in one fell swoop.

Another giant mystery box is sitting up behind the judges, but before it’s raised, Gordon announces that the winner will be publishing their own cookbook. This hadn’t yet been mentioned as a prize thus far in the season…only the cash prize and the “coveted” MasterChef trophy. To me, this indicates that the producers have now decided who is going to win the show. Because they’re not going to publish a cookbook with a winner who they don’t believe can sell a bunch of cookbooks. I remember chatting with the producers after my season aired (in which there was NO cookbook deal for the winner) and they told me what a nightmare it had been to publish the season 1 winner’s cookbook…Whitney Miller’s Modern Hospitality: Simple Recipes with Southern Charm, and that they had no plans of publishing another cookbook unless the winner was incredibly marketable. We all know that Christine Ha, the winner of Season 3, would publish an incredibly marketable cookbook, so the cookbook returned for her season after skipping my season. (And it’s a good cookbook, I love it. Recipes From My Home Kitchen: Asian and American Comfort Food.) Yet there was no announcement of a cookbook in the beginning of this season (at least not that my IPA-soaked brain remembers), so I believe at this point they’ve come to a decision on the probable winner and they believe that person will be able to sell a cookbook. It will be interesting to watch the editing at this point forward.

The box is slowly lifted, and we first see lots and lots of feet. And the box is filled with family members. And the tears are flowing. (All over my keyboard, in fact.) Husbands, wives, children, and parents flock to the contestants’ stations and I can’t tell you what a joy it is to get this gift. After merely 1 week of being without my loved ones during the signature dish challenge, I bawled my eyes out when my partner, my neighbor Sharon, and my old college roomie and partner in crime Monty showed up to cheer me on. The subsequent 7 weeks without any loved ones around was complete and utter hell.

Yet Krissi is in the very back, having witnessed loved ones rushing to the sides of her fellow competitors…but the box is empty and there’s no one for her. Some folks watching the show were probably thinking cruel thoughts at that moment. But Ramsay carries an iPad back to her station where her son has recorded a special message for her. (He couldn’t make the trip out due to standardized testing, and thank GOD the studio didn’t press him to skip that test. Though I have NO love for standardized testing!) Remember, Krissi’s son idolizes Gordon Ramsay and wants to be a chef when he grows up. He sits on the couch with a MASSIVE dog on his lap and assures his mom that the house is still intact, nothing caught fire, and nobody died…he misses her food and he says he’ll see her in the finale. And Krissi is bawling and laughing with that bittersweet mix of emotion that we experience so rarely in adult life. Even Joe is tearing up. I feel like he really admires Krissi and identifies with her…he probably sees something of himself in her son, and something of his mother in Krissi.

The theme of the mystery box is amazing…cook a dish inspired by your loved ones…inspired by home. They can bring up to 15 items back from the MasterChef kitchen and have 1 hour to cook a dish that reminds them of home.

What I would cook depends entirely on who was under that box for me. If it was my partner, there’s no question what it would be. Christian’s Big Chocolate-O. Chocolate ladyfingers, toasted hazelnuts coated in doce de leite (cream caramel…a treat from his childhood in Brazil), espresso chocolate mousse, and shaved dark chocolate. Chocolate is the way to his heart, and I invented this dessert for him on his birthday many years ago. (We celebrate 11 years a week from today.)

My family at my house for Thanksgiving, me on the ground with the nieces and nephews, like always

If my parents were under that box, I’d make beans and cornbread…the staple that my parents raised me on. We were poor, there’s no two ways about it. And beans and cornbread is about the cheapest wholesome meal you can serve your family. We had it several times a week. But to this day, it’s a meal that feeds my soul when I make it, because it reminds me of my childhood and how hard my parents worked to provide their 4 kids with everything they needed to become good humans. Simple, to be sure. Would the judges despise something so simple? Probably. But it would be made with more love in my heart than probably anything else I’ve ever made, and I wouldn’t dare make anything else to pay tribute to the best parents anyone could ever possibly have.

But what if it was my best buds? J-P and Jacques….brothers who I’ve known since I was a kid? Who’ve traveled the world and the oceans with me. (J-P and I once visited all 7 continents together in the span of less than a year.) That’s a no-brainer, too. Benny Breakfast. I’m not sure why they love it so much. It’s simple. But it’s what they ask for on every hangout, regardless of what time it is. Buttermilk pancakes. Eggs scrambled with veggies from the garden. Crispy home fries. And little espresso macchiatos dusted with cinnamon, or “mini Bennies” as they call them. Again…very simple. But it’s the food that connects us as dear friends.

Which of us presents sophisticated restaurant cuisine to our loved ones each night? Food with soul and heart comes from the family dinner table and the humble kitchen, not the bustling, frantic room in the back of a restaurant. Family meals come from recipes handed down through the generations, or recipes conceived yourself based on a loved one’s favorite ingredients. I have NEVER been a fan of “sophisticated” cuisine, because it is soulless. I’m in love with the food served at family tables and from street carts and small family cafes around the world, because this is the food that we identify ourselves and our cultures by. It is the food we prepare and eat to celebrate life with the people we love. A fine dining restaurant can put a flawless plate of food in front of you that looks too pretty to eat, and is perfectly seasoned and expertly prepared…but is it the meal you’ll remember on your death bed? Never. Because food prepared by a chef is, at most, an art form. And you can admire it, and discuss it, and it can blow your mind. But it will never feed your soul. Food prepared with love for someone whom the cook truly cares for transcends mere sustenance or art. It is an act of love, as powerful as sacrifice, as powerful as empathy, even as powerful as the act that creates life itself. That’s why no plate prepared by Thomas Keller or Gordon Ramsay or Grant Achatz or Jose Andres will EVER mean more to you than something your mother or grandmother or spouse or child will cook for you. If we saw more of this on MasterChef, it would truly be a show worth watching.

Time is called and judging begins. This is really a challenge where EVERY dish should be tasted, and the story behind it told, and I’m upset with the producers for not making that logical exception.

Natasha is the first of the 3 selected for tasting. She has prepared a dish heavily influenced by southeast Asian cuisine…a vegetarian dish of coconut rice, roasted corn with shrimp paste, garlic and ginger, and green curry sauce. Joe is impressed with the flavor, and the other judges love it.

Jessie is next, with a gorgeous plate of seared duck breast with blackberry red wine sauce, roasted Brussels sprouts with pancetta, and pecans. The judges are very impressed.

Luca’s is the final dish to be judged, and he has prepared pan-seared halibut wrapped in caul fat, with white asparagus risotto. Caul fat is a thin layer of fatty membrane that encases the internal organs of animals. (Most of the caul fat used in kitchens is from pigs.) It is used to wrap otherwise lean means to keep them moist and flavorful while cooking, and Luca’s use of it with fish is pretty darn brilliant, as it will hold the halibut fillet together and keep it plump and firm. White asparagus is just normal asparagus that is grow in the absence of light, so that its natural pigments don’t develop. In that absence of light, though, the skin on the spears tends to grow very thick and woody, so unlike green asparagus (which should NOT be peeled, despite what the MasterChef judges may tell you), white asparagus should have the woody part of the lower spear peeled, or just use the tops in your dish, and save the bottoms for veggie stock or soup. The judges are very impressed.

The winner is Luca, and his beautiful wife couldn’t look any prouder. Luca heads back to the pantry and discovers that, in the next challenge, everyone will be cooking Japanese food: shrimp and vegetable tempura, a California sushi roll with Alaskan king crab, a variety of sashimi including shrimp, uni (sea urchin roe), ahi, salmon roe, and mackerel.

Sushi is something I haven’t fully explored, simply because living in Dallas, the price I have to pay for sushi-grade fish is prohibitive. I typically only indulge in sushi when I’m in a seaside town, it’s very rare that I eat it in Dallas. This does not mean I don’t like it…it’s easily one of my favorite foods. But while the idea of going out for “cheap tacos” makes my stomach growl, the concept of “cheap sushi” makes me a little green. Sushi is something you spend money on. And it’s REALLY easy to spend a bundle on it. For the record, the best sushi I’ve had was NOT in Japan, but in Seattle…at Nijo. Though if you’d like a kick in the pants and you have Netflix streaming, check out the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, about an ancient sushi master in Japan whose sons are struggling to follow in their father’s foosteps.

Luca’s advantage is that he gets to split the 6 other contestants into teams of 2 who will work together to replicate the sushi plates in tag-team fashion, with one contestant working at a time. (They did this EXACT same challenge in season 3, didn’t they?) Luca pairs up James and Jordan, Natasha and Krissi, and Eddie and Jessie.

Christian Collins climbs down into a blowhole in Hawaii to fetch me a sea urchin

Sushi is primarily about knife skills, as the way you cut the fish will determine its flavor and, more importantly, texture and mouth feel. Though with other sushi items that aren’t filleted, like roe (fish eggs), other things must be taken into account. Uni, or sea urchin roe, comes in dainty orange strips called “corals.” They are incredibly delicate, and Ramsay chastises Jordan for pulling them out of the urchin’s shell with his fingers, rather than the handle of a spoon, and then he sticks them under running water, effectively rinsing away the flavor. Uni is an acquired taste…it’s very astringent and a bit reminiscent of lysol…but in a good sorta way? It’s very hard to describe. I have many fond memories of eating it fresh in Hawaii, caught by the sea-loving Christian Collins who braved blow holes and sharp spines to give me my first taste of just-caught uni.

Another trick for sushi is the preparation of the rice…a short grain rice that must be sticky enough to hold together, but seasoned perfectly with salt and sweetened rice vinegar.

It’s hard to watch this challenge because it’s so chaotic, with so much screaming, so who knows what really happened, but the results are that Natasha and Krissi put up a great plate at the very last minute; James and Jordan are missing components, have under-seasoned tempura, have a beautiful California roll but which is also underseasoned, and haven’t nailed the ebi (shrimp) sushi; and Eddie and Jessie’s uni is not properly cleaned, the fish isn’t cut properly, and the rice has too much vinegar.

Natasha and Krissi are the obvious winners, and will be team captains next week. James and Jordan squeak by on the merits of their fish butchery, leaving Jessie and Jordan on the chopping block. And the judges decide that the weakest link on the team was Eddie, so he gets the axe.

Eddie…the meat man…former NFL player turned accomplished chef. Originally from Texas, so even though he no longer lives here, I still claim him for the Lone Star State. Look at his Wikipedia page to see his impressive list of athletic achievements, which aren’t just limited to football. (He still holds the national college freshman record for track and field high hurdles.) Eddie’s food dream is to open a gastropub, and I can’t wait to eat there. Follow Eddie on Facebook and Twitter, and wish him well in his food future!

Feel free to comment below, especially if you have a particularly precious food memory with loves ones. What would YOU have cooked for the mystery box?

(WARNING: This blog contains the crazed ravings of a MasterChef season 2 survivor who has no inside knowledge of how this season was produced. Everything in this blog should be considered opinion and nothing else.)

Before I begin, I need to address a MasterChef issue that’s been flying around the TV gossip websites today. These sites are alleging that Josh Marks, who was runner up on Season 3 of MasterChef, was arrested Monday near the University of Chicago under very bizarre circumstances. I won’t repeat any of the allegations the sites are spreading, nor will I link to any of them. But I can tell you that Josh had an incredibly difficult time dealing with his experience on MasterChef, as many contestants from former seasons have. (Some top 100 contestants from this season are still wrestling with suicidal urges.) Josh’s social media is getting blitzed today…mostly with well-wishes, thank goodness, but some folks have decided to taunt him and make fun of him. So I ask all of you to focus good thoughts, well wishes, and prayers in his direction. The allegations include assault on a police officer, which could result in many years in prison, and that’s a very dark possibility, indeed. I hope MasterChef and Ramsay are reaching out to him to offer support and help, rather than their typical response, which is to remain aloof and deny, deny, deny.

So the group challenge this episode has made me more jealous than ANYTHING I’ve ever seen on MasterChef. While Krissi doesn’t walk or hike for fun…she considers it torture…I am an outdoorsman in the extreme. Cave exploring is my hobby. The idea of strapping a 40 pound pack to my back for a 50 mile trip gets me all worked up. I recently had to hang my canoe up under my garage because my life has become so busy I’m not using it nearly as often as I used to. So the idea of a MasterChef campout where I get to cook an epic meal in the wilderness is just…well…it’s not fair that we didn’t do that on my season!

Backpacking into the South Fork of the Hoh River valley for an epic outdoor feast on my 30th birthday

I love cooking in the wilderness. For my 30th birthday, I went to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state with a bunch of friends. We strapped HEAVY packs to our backs and hiked up the south fork of the glacier-fed Hoh River about 6 miles. But instead of our packs being filled with climbing gear, they were filled with bottles of wine, cast iron skillets, fine aged cheeses, and prime steaks.

As we neared the spot where we planned to camp…a gravel bar in the middle of the icy river…we spotted a meadow bursting with fresh berries: blueberries, blackberries, and yellow raspberries. We dropped our packs and foraged for about an hour, picking enough to make a truly epic wild berry cobbler in the big cast iron skillet I had in my pack. It was a fitting way to celebrate my 30th.

Picking wild golden raspberries in the temperate rainforest valley of the South Fork of the Hoh River in Olympic National Park

The contestants will have to camp overnight, conceptualize their menu, and have an extremely limited amount of equipment to work with: a camping knife, a flint for starting a fire, a cast iron skillet, and a wooden spoon. One team will get 3 rabbits to work with as their protein, and the other will have 6 pigeons.

Bri and Natasha are the team captains this go-around. Bri’s first pick is James, because she thinks he’s comfortable in the wilderness. (As all good Texas boys should be!) She completes her team with Eddie and Luca.

Natasha’s first pick is Jordan, followed by Jessie and Krissi. Then the judges pull a surprise on the contestants by switching the teams, possibly spurred on by the fact that Krissi announced flatly that she hates Bri and doesn’t want her team captained by a vegetarian. (If you follow either of the two of them on Facebook, you know that they’re dear friends and consider each other like sisters…this is just more manufactured drama being spurred on by the producers.)

We also find out that Natasha grew up in South Africa on lots of land. HELLO?!?! Why haven’t we heard more stories about that, producers? That’s fascinating! (Natasha occasionally drops by my blog, I’d LOVE for you to share some stories from your childhood, Natasha!)

Bri had the best mushroom dish, so she gets to pick the protein, and she chooses the rabbit. I’d have chosen that, too. While pigeon (which tends to be called “squab” in fine restaurants because of the negative image that Americans have of pigeons) is actually a DELICIOUS bird…a direct relative of the dove, which is highly prized by game hunters…rabbit meat is near and dear to my heart. I’ve cooked it many dozens of times, even at FRANK, but my favorite memory of a rabbit meal was cooking a rabbit and fennel stew over a wood-fired stove in a 300 year old stone cottage in La Feuillee, a tiny village in the Brittany region of western France. La Feuillee, which translates into “the green tree canopy” is one of those picture perfect medieval villages, so far off the tourist track that there’s not even a hotel there, and so small there’s not even a grocery store…just a small boulangerie selling baguettes, some eggs with poop and feathers still caked onto them, some carrots and turnips with mud clumped at their tips, and glass jars of milk with the cream floating on top. (France still somehow manages to maintain a localized agricultural system…the majority of food sold in grocery stores there, however large, is from a farm nearby. It’s incredible.) Each morning around 9am, a man would arrive in a small truck and blow a whistle. Everyone in the village would come out to see what kind of meat he had available that day. And one morning, he had the loveliest rabbits. That night we dined on a slow-simmered stew of rabbit and fennel, with crusty baguettes from the boulangerie, stinky aged cheese, and the local pear cider for which Brittany is famous. A simple, humble meal with few ingredients, but one I will never forget.

In addition to the proteins, the teams also have potatoes, quail eggs, wild mushrooms, carrots, some spices, and some oil. But, as you may have gathered from the paragraph above, a lot of ingredients aren’t needed to produce a perfect meal. Though the judges and contestants are really tossing around the word “Michelin” so there is apparently a push for sophisticated presentation…completely unnecessary in the wild. Both the rabbit and the pigeon would be most delicious stewed very slowly over coals, but a stew isn’t an elegant thing to present.

Bri has a stroke of genius when she says they could make fresh pasta with the flour and quail eggs in their box. Krissi, the master pasta maker, is gung ho about making pasta out in the wild.

Natasha’s team somehow comes up with a spit roaster and is testing out one of their pigeons on it. The spit roaster was not narrated as part of the “barest of equipment” so I’m curious as to what other exciting and helpful things the producers have given them, but not told us about. For the record, it’s totally easy to build your own spit roaster out of sticks. We also don’t see the contestants starting their fires with the “flint” Gordon talked about, but I see a fuel container in the background of one shot…so don’t for an instant think that this is ACTUALLY a roughing-it challenge. The fires were probably started and maintained by the production staff. (Though I *CAN* start a fire with a flint or a piece of string…everyone should be able to do that.) I just hope that they were provided with EXTRA bottles of wine for themselves for the night, because a Dixie cup of old-vine Zinfandel around a crackling fire beneath the stars is, by far, the finest way to enjoy wine.

(However, in an interview with Monti Carlo after her elimination, Bri reveals that the contestants were not fed any dinner or breakfast during the camping challenge, and they had to make do with ingredients they weren’t cooking with. Bri apparently made something like an oatmeal for herself, and when Gordon came over to check on them, he tasted the oatmeal and loved it so much that he ate half of it, leaving her hungry!)

After a night spent in tents, the contestants are pulling their dishes together. They’re being very resourceful…rolling out pasta with wine bottles and boiling pasta in tin coffee cans. But at the very last minute, Bri drops one of their plates. So they have to scramble to re-plate, pulling some portions from their other 2 plates. And the food is presented to the judges sitting at a white tablecloth beneath ancient oaks. A lovely setting for a wild meal.

Bri presents her Blue Team’s dish…rabbit braised in white wine with carrots and wild mushrooms on quail egg pasta, topped with wild mustard flowers. Joe is pretty impressed with the pasta. The only critique is from Gordon, who says the pasta needs a bit more seasoning.

Natasha presents her Red Team’s dish…roasted pigeon, farro (wheat berries) with wild mushrooms and a quail egg yolk on top, and honey glazed carrots. Their dish certainly takes the lead in terms of presentation. It’s downright stunning. Eddie’s cook on the pigeon is impressive…he cooked it on the spit high above the fire first to get it medium-rare, then finished it in the hot cast iron skillet so the skin was browned and crisp. It’s pretty genius. The only thing I’d have done differently would have been to brine the pigeon for an hour first, provided there was water and salt. Both pigeon AND rabbit benefit greatly from brining due to their low fat content.

In a unique move, the judges then give the team’s dishes to the opposite team to taste. On my season, we were STRICTLY forbidden from tasting each others’ dishes, presumably because they didn’t want us to know who was actually making great food. (This might lead to us questioning eliminations. If we had tasted a dish, but then the judges declared it “too salty” or “overcooked,” we’d know the critique was a lie.)

Both dishes are excellent, and the judges seem divided over the results, with Gordon leaning toward the Blue’s rabbit, and Joe leaning toward the Red’s pigeon, but they will announce the results by colored smoke signal. (really?) And the color of the smoke that fills the air is…Red. Personally, I think the Blue team showed a bit more range of technique, but there’s no denying that the Red team’s plate looked like a restaurant dish after being cooked and plated in the wilderness, which is an impressive feat.

Blue Team is headed to the pressure test, and it will be Jessie’s very first of the season. (Lucky girl!) The winning Red Team gets to decide which member of the Blue Team to save from elimination, and they seem divide over whether to save Krissi or Bri, but they all agree that Jordan and Jessie must stay and compete because they are the strongest and pose the greatest threat.

They choose Krissi to stay. Leaving Bri, Jordan, and Jessie to battle it out over chocolate eclairs.

The single question I get more often than any other in relation to MasterChef is, “How does everyone seem to know how to cook whatever the judges throw at them, especially without a recipe?” Well, without revealing ALL the show’s secrets, I might refer you to any other MasterChef series from another country. If you watch one of those seasons, you’ll see the contestants being taught “master classes” and learning the skills they will later put to use in challenges. The producers of those series know that the audience wants this knowledge, too, so the classes are part of the actual episodes. MasterChef USA has the same overall format as the other series, but the producers here think that you would rather be amazed at seeing someone who has never before made an eclair produce a serviceable eclair…than be educated by viewing portions of the class on choux paste and pastry cream that the contestants attended to learn how to make the components that can be assembled into an eclair. Those who regularly watch MasterChef from other countries are NEVER surprised to see a contestant on MasterChef USA claim, “I’ve never made meringue pie before” and then suddenly turn out a perfect meringue pie…because they KNOW that the MasterChef process involves an incredible amount of education…almost a mini culinary school boot camp.

So! Eclairs. Eclairs are a French pastry made from choux paste. (That’s pronounced “shoo.”) It’s a cooked egg dough that puffs dramatically in the oven, leaving a hollow center, and it’s used to make profiteroles (cream puffs) and eclairs, as well as Spanish and Mexican churros, and the luscious savory cheese puffs called gougeres. Choux paste can be challenging to make unless you use a recipe that lists ingredients by weight, rather than by volume, because the exact ratio of egg to flour is critical to achieve the proper puff. I like to use Alton Brown’s recipe on the rare occasion that I make choux paste.

Eclairs consist of choux paste piped into a long ribbon, then baked until it puffs and hollows out in the center. Then pastry cream is piped into the center…pastry cream being sugar, egg yolks, and milk, usually scented with vanilla, and thickened with cornstarch or flour. (ie…vanilla pudding) Then they are glazed on top with chocolate.

The contestants will have 1 hour to make 6 perfect eclairs. A tall order. But everyone finishes. Bri is judged first, and her eclairs are a little flat. (They needed to stay longer in the oven to fully cook.) They are also not filled all the way to the end. They aren’t consistent sizes, either.

Jordan is next, and his eclairs are a little soft, but are filled consistently. Graham feels the whole eclair is too sweet, and Gordon agrees.

Jessie is judged last. Her pastry is cooked through, but not filled all the way through, and her chocolate glaze isn’t sweetened.

We’re confident that Jordan is safe, so it comes down to Bri and Jessie. Gordon pulls another one of his favorite word tricks, and we think Jessie is getting the axe, but instead it falls to Bri. It’s obvious from how Gordon and Graham speak of Bri that they really like her. And I do, too. Bri has been one of my favorites from the beginning. She’s a fellow theatre nerd. Since the show, Bri has been working as a pastry chef in Los Angeles, but reports that she has been offered two VERY incredible job opportunities in New York, one at a Michelin-starred restaurant, and one at one of Thomas Keller’s restaurants. (Thomas Keller is one of the most famous and influential chefs in the world.) This is MASSIVE news, and clearly indicates the level of skill Bri has. I don’t believe ANY contestant from any previous MasterChef season has been offered jobs of this caliber so quickly after the show. So I doubt Bri will be heading back into the world of theatre any time soon!

Follow this charming lass on Facebook and Twitter and be sure to wish her good luck as she heads to New York to join the big-time chef world! I do hope I get a chance to cook with you in the future, sweetheart! You are more than adorable.